He was Greek speaking because of the regions cultural heritage, but being of Greek ethnic origins is not so easy to determine.

It has been the east/west 'crossroads' for eons, he could have been an A-rab.

Or Persian, or... *gasp* even a Turk!

If there were white people in the Americas (thousands of miles, separated by water) before even Columbus got there, you'd be dense to not believe there's a good chance that a nomadic trading people (from a region even closer than the Americas are to Europe and not separated by an ocean) wouldn't have intermingled with the Indo-European, Greek, Persian and other ethnicities in that area, particularly considering it lie along one of the world's most prolific trade routes.